Featured Member Interview – Patricia V. Davis

Patricia V. Davis is a proponent of what she calls “female dynamism” – which signifies women taking positive action to support each other. It’s why she founded the Women’s PowerStrategy™ Conference, and why she is a big supporter of the Women’s National Book Association. Here she tells us about her journey to becoming a novelist.

“My background is about as provincial and backward as you can get. My parents believed girls should marry young and they did everything to prevent me from going to college. I had the grades to get into a great school, but that would have entailed leaving home and living in a dorm, and ‘good girls’ didn’t do that. They threatened to disown me if I left, and at that age, I didn’t have the courage to defy them. I loved them, wanted their approval, so I ended up going to a two-year local school as a ‘compromise’, and I married soon after graduation, a marriage that lasted less than 13 months. The decision to be an obedient daughter held me back in ways I can’t begin to describe and made my journey to becoming a published author twice as hard as it had to be. And it is indeed a monumental challenge, even if one has family support.

“I had to get a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing and Education first, something I didn’t achieve until I was in my mid-thirties. I taught English for many years, first in the United States and then in Athens, Greece, and I enjoyed that very much, although deep in my heart, I always wanted to write. I didn’t become published until I was over the age of fifty.”

Why did you choose the RMS Queen Mary as the setting for your trilogy?

“Total fluke, one that some believe is more than serendipitous. I knew nothing about the ship, not its history, nor that it is purported to be one of the ten most haunted places in the United States. I’d gotten a lucky break when Maria Shriver, who was then the First Lady of California, asked me to go down to Long Beach and work at her women’s conference as one of the reporters. The Long Beach Convention Center was already booked, so I ended up in a stateroom aboard the Queen Mary. In the midst of my preparations for Maria’s conference, I had an amazing experience with the paranormal that was unexpected for someone who knew nothing about the ship. I came home from that trip with the first story already cooking in my head. That was in 2007. Cooking for Ghosts wasn’t published until 2016. It went through more than one agency before I found the perfect fit for it and for me ─ Gordon Warnock at Fuse Literary.

“Everyone in the industry is saying that there are more opportunities than ever. That’s true, but there are also more books being published than ever. You have no shot at selling a book, either to an agent or to a reader if it’s not as polished as can be. If you try to rush the process, to ‘get your book out there’, as I’ve heard so many new writers say, you’ll be lucky if you sell a hundred copies. Traditionally or independently published, edit, edit, edit.

“The second book in the Queen Mary trilogy, Spells and Oregano, was released five months ago, so, I’m currently promoting Books I and II while writing Book III, Demons, Well-Seasoned. You might be able to tell from the titles that these are magical realism, and I love the genre, so I have a vague idea of what I might write once this trilogy is complete. That book, whatever it is, will be a standalone, because promoting two books while writing a third is… well, it’s indescribable. But every time I feel exhausted by it all, I remember how long I waited to do this and it gives me a burst of energy. I’m on Facebook a lot, I’m available by email, and there’s a great page The Secret Spice Book Series Page where readers can connect to hear about the books, my appearances, and some really fun contests.

The Secret Spice Book Series was selected by The Pulpwood Queens Book Club as an official selection, and they’re the largest book club in the world, with over 750 branches. Breathless Winery, a gold medal award winning winery in Healdsburg, has also chosen the series to pilot their Books and Bubbles program, along with Rebecca Rosenberg’s The Secret Life of Mrs. London, which was recently released.”

Patricia V. Davis is also the author of The Diva Doctrine: 16 Universal Principles Every Woman Needs to Know, and the bestselling Harlot’s Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss, and Greece. For more information about Patricia’s books, visit her website www.patriciavdavis.com

Comments

It’s lovely to see this interview here. The Women’s National Book Association San Francisco Chapter has always been so wonderfully supportive of its members, and I for one, have appreciated the camaraderie and encouragement.